Agile Candor

"Today should always be better than yesterday" - mother of Gabby Douglas, the first African American to win individual all-around gold and the first American to win gold in both the individual all-around and team competitions in gymnastics. A retrospective provides the opportunity for teams to get together and tweak "something" so they can achieve better results than before. Teams use retrospectives for joint learning, making a decision, choosing an action or strengthening a common bond . In Scrum, retrospectives are held at the end of each sprint. Kanban is non-prescriptive about retrospectives, but most kanban teams end up doing retrospectives at a regular interval or as-needed basis. Some teams resist the retrospectives and lose them entirely. Why does that happen and what is the impact? Well, that's another article for later. Here we look at the positive, and how agile teams use retrospectives to their advantage. This list is just a small subset of many po...

Let us assume management and team have some experience with agile but they only understand parts of it (such as iterative delivery, sprint ceremonies etc.). Have you faced such situations? Which practice(s) and concept(s) did you strive to adopt but were challenged? what tools did you use for influencing the outcomes?   Here are some highlights from a LinkedIn discussion I started about misunderstood agile practices. * In many "traditional" companies agile is seen as a new set of controls to get work done. Old roles are re-labeled. * Many companies think that they can purchase agile as product also if they have few certified SM/PO on pay roll, company is agile. * Misconception: Equating testing with quality improvement. Quality needs to be designed in from the get go. * Try this: Making metrics visible. Nobody can argue with truths, and the truth is a strong motivator of change in group dynamics. * Conducting honest retrospectives over many sprints is often neglected. * Th...

I keep running into situations where managers, with all their good intentions, either misinterpret, ignore, or fail to understand certain agile concepts due to various reasons. Shortcuts provide them immediate relief the long term pain typically aggravates. This impacts not just the outcomes, but also the team and the managers in ways that are usually not positive. Are you a manager? This is for you... Start right , because if you don't you will put the entire project or initiative in jeopardy. Managing expectations is the key. If your voice is not being heard by higher-ups, do not be a weakling and get help. It could be someone with more influence or with more experience or perhaps a mentor or a coach. Ask yourself - who can help you make a convincing argument and even argue on your behalf? Engaging higher ups is not sufficient. Get your team to appreciate why starting right is in their own interest. Ally with the team. Adapt or Die . If you don't learn from mistakes yo...